ANIMALS. 393 



Kind ; and Crantz assures us, that when the Greenlanders are 

 got together, nothing is so customary among them as to turn the 

 Europeans into ridicule. They are obliged, indeed, to yield 

 them the pre-eminence in understanding and mechanic arts ; 

 but they do not know how to set any value upon these. They 

 therefore count themselves the only civilized and well bred 

 people in the world ; and it is common with them, when they 

 see a quiet or a modest stranger, to say that he is almost as well 

 bred as a Greenlander. 



From this description, therefore, this whole race of people 

 may be considered as distinct from any other Their long con- 

 tinuance in a climate the most inhospitable, their being obliged 

 to subsist on food the most coarse and ill-prepared, the savage- 

 ness of their maimers, and their laborious lives, aU have contri- 

 buted to shorten their stature, and to deform their bodies. In 

 proportion as we approach towards the north pole, the size of 

 the natives appears to diminish, gi'owing less and less as we ad- 

 vance higher, till we come to those latitudes that are destitute 

 of all inhabitants whatsoever. 



The wretched natives of these climates seem fitted by nature 

 to endure the rigours of their situation. As their food is but 

 scanty and precarious, their patience in hunger is amazing.' A 

 man who has eaten nothing for four days can manage his little 

 canoe in the most furious waves, and calmly subsist in the midst 

 of a tempest that would quickly dash an European boat to pieces. 

 Their strength is not less amazing than their patience : a wo- 

 man among them will carry a piece of timber or a stone, near 

 double the weight of what an European can lift. Tlieir bodies 

 are of a dark grey all over ; and their faces brown or olive. The 

 tincture of their skins partly seems to arise from their dirty man- 

 ner of living, being generally daubed with train-oil ; and partly 

 from the rigours of climate, as the sudden alterations of cold 

 and raw air in winter, and of burning heats in summer, shade 

 their complexions by degrees, till in a succession of generations, 

 they at last become almost black. As the countries in which 

 these reside are the most barren, so the natives seem the most 

 l)arbarous of any part of the earth. Their more southern neigh- 

 bours of America^ treat them with the same scorn that a polished 



